The coronavirus (COVID-19) is not good, that’s a given, but for the following reasons I’m not worried about it. Call me crazy, but I’m actually investing in downtrodden stocks. Don’t get me wrong, I wish this never happened and I fear for the elderly. It’s a definitely a scare for them, and rightfully so (especially the 80+ crowd and those that might has an existing condition).

Okay, now that I pretty much identified that I hate that this is happening, the following are the reasons that I’m not afraid of this virus and I’m actually participating by investing in a small purchase increments (I call it nibbling) in the stock market.

Reasons not to fear the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

• According to the site worldometer.com, people under 40 years old have less than a 1/4 of 1 percent chance (.20%) of actually dying from this virus (mortality rate). And of that under 1% group that happen to die from it, most had underlying cardiovascular or other health issues. So the average person under 50 is fine (those in the 50 range only have a 1.3% mortality rate, so again… not too bad). In fact, children that are in the 0 to 9 age group so far have no reported deaths from the virus (according to worldometer.com).
• I’m betting the statistics are excluding a lot of people that had the virus and beat it without even knowing it. Shoot, in the US, medical practitioners are just getting the COVID-19 testing kits. Even with the medical personnel getting them now, there is a limited supply of the these kits. So there is a great chance that the true mortality rate numbers are most likely less than they appear.
• Everybody is using China as sample set for the statistics because they have the largest set of case numbers since it’s speculated that China is the point of origin, but their environment is different than ours. Their population behavior, hygiene and overall culture (example, a lot of men supposedly smokes over there) is much different than the culture in the United States and elsewhere.
• While developed countries have a hard time using the measures China was able to use to control the virus, we also have positives that China (currently) doesn’t have. For example, a lot of us can work from home like google recently announced. We wash our hand more often, use Purell more often, and have cleaner environments and food. The US is not China. Not to say that China hasn’t made great strides over the past 10 years, because they have!
• Times are different now versus the Spanish Flu days (surprisingly, it’s speculated that the Spanish Flu started in China too). We understand the science behind the way such diseases get spread around and understand both preventative measures (washing hands, etc) and nutritional information to slow that spread. We are also able to enhance our body’s immune system to help aid our recovery if we do get it.
• It’ll be warmer soon, so people will get vitamin D from the sun, and maybe the ultraviolet rays from the sun will slow down the spread of the virus too.

For all these reasons and more, I’m just not afraid of the virus and perhaps you shouldn’t be either.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the stock market drop so quickly. I have to wonder if it would still drop as quick as it has if we still had or would bring back the uptick rule? It seems like such a rule has value in these scary, panic driven times (that’s why it was created in the first place).

So what I’m going now…

I’m taking my emotion out of the equation and buying stock, but in nibbles not large chunks. Back in the old days (like 2 years ago), nibbling wasn’t possible because of brokerage transaction fees. But since those fees are now zero, why not buy small amounts of stock… Shoot, even a $50 dollar investment (or less) is now possible… I personally don’t like to go below $500 dollars, but I would if I were a very young investor just starting out. While the falling knife scenario still might be happening, I’ll still be nibbling away… I guess I’m riding the dip in the stock market downswing. I’m not in a hurry though, I bought some shares on Monday (3/9/2020). Next month, I might buy more shares or if we go much deeper into a bear market (which is a drop of more than 20% from the market high).

No fear!

Don